The 'Mayflower', 1620.

Description

Model (scale 1:60). In 1620, fleeing religious persecution, 102 puritans led by John Carver (1576-1621) set sail from Plymouth, seeking to establish a colony in the New World. 66 days later, blown of their intended course for Virginia, they came shore on Cape Cod, Masachusetts, and established a settlement which they named New Plymouth. The ship in which the Pilgrim Fathers sailed was an ordinary small merchant ship of the period. The decoration has been copied from the geometric patterns shown in the manuscript 'Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry' by Matthew Baker, with the addition of a conventional 'mayflower' on the stern. The rig of a small merchant ship of this period was likely to have been the ordinary three-masted arrangement.